By now, intrepid knitter, you are quite confident in picking up your dropped stitches, correcting your stitching errors, and conquering the subtle art of perfection. You have mastered the microcosm of the world of errors. Your garment is perfectly knitted; no mistake has been made that has not also been unmade. What’s left to learn?

At some point (it happens to the best of us) you will stitch a garment that, despite careful attention, presents a flaw: the sleeves are too long, the ribbing flips up because it was worked too loosely, the body is too short, or the yoke pattern is not correctly centered. How are you going to fix these things without beginning again? How will you keep this garment off the tragic (and expensive) pile of Things That Must Not Be Worn?